Brian Schmidt has been creating music and sounds for games for more than 35 years. Recipient of the Game Audio Network Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award and 2017 inductee into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame, he began his career as a pinball composer and programmer at Williams Electronic Games, and has worked on more than 130 games including classic arcade and console games such as Black Knight 2000, the Desert Strike series, Madden, Crueball, winner of Sega’s “Best Sound” Award, and NARC, the theme of which was covered and released by The Pixies. In addition to award-winning composition and sound design, Brian has helped create industry changing technologies, having been awarded more than 25 patents in game audio technology and creating technologies such as Capcom’s QSound 3D Audio arcade chip and the Xbox Audio Creation Tool. During his time at Microsoft, he oversaw audio tech for the OG Xbox, introducing interactive digital surround sound to games, where he also created its iconic start-up sound. A frequent speaker at events and institutions around the world, Brian is also the founder and Executive Director of GameSoundCon, the industry’s largest professional conference on game audio, is President of the Game Audio Network Guild, holds the Professor Emeritus title at DigiPen Institute of Technology, and serves on the advisory board of the Game Developer’s Conference.
